Serenade
by steampunkepsilon
Summary: In which John takes up the violin after Reichenbach.


It felt wrong, to stand there in the brisk autumn evening at the heart of the graveyard, with its masses of stone shapes hovering over the graves they represented and its haze of fog drifting about eerily like the fog over Dartmoor, and know that he was alone. Not simply alone because he had come so late and few people in their right minds visited graveyards at midnight, but alone in a much more painfully hollow sense. Not only that, but it felt wrong to stand in front of the grave that he was, and even more so to hold what he did in his right hand, and all of it felt very, very _wrong._

John ran his tongue over his lip, a nervous tic, though really, there was nothing to be nervous about. He had long ago stopped being afraid of things. He was a lonely, angry man on many days of the week, and that kept him safe enough. And besides, he was a man of the military, with nerves of steel and a strong moral principle and he had little to fear in an empty, quiet graveyard. It was in as nice a part of town as it could be, being what it was. Quaint. Simple. Peaceful. Safe.

Limitlessly dull.

Swallowing, he glanced around, briefly scanning the lopsided stretch of property for other late-night visitors such as himself, and then looked ahead and down again, eyes fixed on the black marbled outline in front of him and the little bundles of flowers that were left there semi-regularly, or had been so far. The small yellow bundle of daisies that Molly had brought wrapped in a little pink paper cone and tied neatly. She'd seemed reluctant to bring them, and she had left quickly. Mrs. Hudson's deep purple lavender blooms, refreshed weekly; a few dozen other individual flowers that acquaintances or even, daresay, fans had brought along, not close enough for a bouquet but feeling obligated to leave something.

He wouldn't have cared, scoffed even, maybe, at the display. John would have nudged him hard in the ribs and urged him to smile and nod and say thank you like normal people do, and he would have, and then ranted and raved later about sentimental acts and their lack of purpose in modern society. John would have let him go off and ignored most of it until he was finished and flung himself to the couch to pout, and then they would move on with life.

The headstone was polished, recently, likely today. Mycroft. Not by his own hand, of course, but he'd had someone do it. It was a nice sentiment, or it would be if it were anyone else. Merely an image to keep. Not sentiment. Wouldn't have made a difference if it was. The Holmes brothers were not men of much emotional devotion.

Favoring his left side just the slightest and reminding himself sharply that if anything was going to be allowed to hurt, it might as well be his opposite shin from when he'd tripped over the coffee table in the flat earlier that morning, he knelt slowly until he could settle on his knees the appropriate distance from the grave, perhaps two feet. Any farther was too far; any closer felt rude. The grass was damp, though he didn't particularly mind; his jeans could suffer the wet spots. Shifting the item of extreme importance in his hands, he sat there for a long moment, simply staring at the name engraved into the stone, as he usually did for at least a couple of minutes each time he visited Sherlock's final resting place.

His fingers drummed the violin case slowly, another tic. It was a fine case, polished, pristine leather smoothly stretched over a sturdy wooden frame, lined with a deep maroon-red velvet of an expensive quality; a gift, from Mycroft, though the precious instrument contained within it had been Sherlock's for much, much longer. Licking his lips again, he pressed them into a thin line and inhaled deeply, setting his back straight with the habit of a soldier and looking down at the case. Flipping open the small clasps keeping it tightly shut, he set the case on the grass just in front of Sherlock Holmes's grave, opening it. The Stradivarius was a familiar sight, painfully so; he hadn't opened the case since...

Before.

The instrument was sleek and smooth and dark, beautifully cool beneath his fingers. It was balanced so much less gracefully in his hands, his shorter muscled arms and his squared-off fingers, and it looked out of place, the bow even more so. It was polished to a nearly reflective perfection, dustless from its time protected within the case, tuned the very smallest measure of sound one could recognize. Holding it with one hand beneath the curving neck and the other at its body or whatever it was called, he studied it carefully, swallowing.

The entire situation was so disgustingly sentimental that even he felt silly doing it, and John hadn't felt foolish about his emotions for a long, long time. He couldn't play the thing himself, had never touched anything but the clarinet and the guitar just a tiny bit at university and then the piano a couple of times when he pushed his limits a bit too high at the pub. He had no doubt that if he really were to try any of those, none would come even close to the harmonious, flowing pieces of musical elegance that Sherlock often crafted in the quiet evening hours at Baker Street. Maybe the nights when he was in a fowl mood, and instead scraped out angst and nonverbal abuse at less decent hours of the morning; that may have been a closer comparison to his skills. Either way, here he was, the experienced army doctor with years of violence and training and rigor behind him, kneeling at the foot of Sherlock Holmes' grave at just past midnight, swimming in gut-twisting sentiment.

But he was there, and he was there of his own free will, and with a sigh, he lifted the vessel of emotion up to the light of the moon. Watching it glint off of the strings and flow smoothly across the polished wood, it was flawless, even the strings brand new; likely they had been replaced not long before everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket. The bow, too; new horse-hairs, barely used. One awkward hand grasping the neck in likely too-tight a grip, he settled it into the crook of his neck, finding it extremely uncomfortable for a moment until he found the proper place for the instrument. He removed the bow from where it lay in the case and fumbled for a moment, trying to recall the grasp that Sherlock had held it in and eventually emulating it closely enough.

He was so glad he was alone. Or at least...that there weren't any other late-night visitors around to see him. Probably looked mad, sitting like this, holding a dead man's violin in a graveyard without any notion of how to play. It would be wrong to shame such a work of craftsmanship by attempting to play it when one had no idea even how to being. It would shame the maker and the instrument, and John Watson himself, and Sherlock.

But Sherlock wasn't there to care, and wouldn't have anyways, and he didn't know who'd made it, and John had stopped caring a long time ago, so he lifted the bow.

The minute he settled it across the strings and adjusted the placement of his hand on the neck and picked a string to pressure and drew it back, a screech of protest so fierce it made him jump whined out of the strings and he pulled the violin back, grimacing. Well, Watson, you tried. And failed. Oh, did you fail. God save the Queen if she ever heard that.

Sighing, he lowered the instrument, and let it settle on his lap for the time being, finding it uncomfortable to remain on his knees and finally sitting back cross-legged, still facing the headstone. He could remember the sound, the bow drawing so much more nicely across the strings, some Beethoven composition or Bach or his own creation flowing from the corner of the room, or the couch or the window. Or at Christmas, with something surprisingly cheerful adding to the spirit of the season - goodness knows that was all Sherlock could contribute in that area of things.

_Don't think that. You're sitting on a dead man's grave, thinking about how much of a sardonic bastard he was, messing about with his violin. That's got to be some kind of wrong._

_No,_ he corrected himself, albeit a bit bitterly. _You're sitting on Sherlock Holmes' grave talking about how much of a sardonic bastard he was, messing about with his violin, and every damned word of it is true._

Narrowing his eyes a bit at the marbled block, he twisted his mouth up unpleasantly at it, shaking his head. " You _were_ a sardonic bastard, " he said, quietly, bitterly, though he regretted the tone of his voice the second he'd spoken the words. It was no use to take them back. But he wanted to.

John didn't stay with Sherlock very long that night.

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He had been visiting Sherlock's grave once a month, every month since the funeral. Usually Saturdays, plans, weather, or health regardless. Aside from those monthly, late-night visits that he would embark on alone, there were other briefer trips, Mrs. Hudson wanted to stop by and leave some posies at the headstone or tidy up, or something along those lines. But the better portion of his time spent at the gravesite was spent at night, alone in the cool summer evening or the bitter wind-gusted autumn night, when he could be by himself.

John had remained at 221B. With his pension, he'd had every expectation that Mrs. Hudson would have to boot him before long, but an 'anonymous' and surprisingly healthy sum of money had been gifted to his account for the specific purpose of paying rent at Baker Street alone. There was no doubt who it was that had bestowed the funds - Mrs. Hudson had claimed ignorance, but he could smell Mycroft from a mile away. Still bitter, still furious, actually, he was glad the older of the two Holmes brothers had decided not to make an appearance in person for such an occasion. John feared he may have greeted him with a fist, or several fists, or perhaps his gun.

Five months later in the middle of November, he was still there in the empty, sickeningly quiet flat, balancing a schedule of seclusion, off-and-on work at the surgery when Sarah - bless her, bless her patient soul - could stand him, or even drag him in, and occasional dinners with Mrs. Hudson or nights out with Greg at the pub. The landlady was particularly rambly some nights, and many of her rants included glory stories of her husband before he became 'that man' and bits and pieces of Sherlock, the latter of which John did everything to avoid. She was nice company, just for tea and crap telly and maybe some biscuits during the week-nights, though she wore on him after a while. They were quieter, more peaceful evenings than those at the pub, which usually were on Fridays and usually ended up with both himself and the former Detective Inspector ranting about _'well God, do you remember when Sherlock did this and this, what an absolute arse'_ and _'Christ, John, you need a girlfriend,'_ and _'Get off it, Greg, you're one to talk'_.

Those nights initially had included Donovan and Anderson, but after one evening was spent entirely filled with murderous glares and half-suppressed urges to throw himself over the table at one or both of them, they became suddenly preoccupied on Fridays and no longer accompanied them. John was bitterly pleased with himself. Lestrade didn't seem to mind.

Five months since Sherlock had leapt from the roof of Saint Bart's.

They were miserably spent. The surgery bored him, which made it far more difficult for Sarah to even get him to come in. His leg and shoulder ached frequently, some days to the point where he had little motivation until he popped some over-the-counter painkillers, though his cane remained pointedly untouched in the umbrella stand by the front door of the building. He refused it. Even now.

There was little to do besides mull over his sluggishly functioning brain, drown himself in crap television, when he was alone; with no highly-functioning sociopath around to throw papers and leave experiments and body parts lying about willy-nilly, it was rarely dirty in the flat, and he didn't have much of an appetite besides what was absolutely necessary to survive on, which basically meant sandwiches, maybe some soup over the burner now and then, coffee, tea. Biscuits when he felt adventurous. Sometimes Mrs. Hudson would want to 'try out a new recipe on him', which was her code for wanting to get him fed up if he wouldn't do it himself, or Greg would stop by the flat to have a chat, and pick his brain about 'nothing in particular, just something I wanted to get your opinion on is all', which usually ended up being a case put into hypothetical terminology to avoid an 'illegal consultation'. Because the police didn't consult amateurs.

Even then, it was a lonely existence. He hadn't expected anything less. Except...

...except on certain days, that one Saturday evening out of the month when he would bundle himself up against London's nightly chill regardless of the season, and slip out of Baker Street as quietly as he could to hail a cab down the road a bit, and off he would go to the cemetery. Granted, it was still lonely, and there was always a question, the driver inquiring why he would want to visit such a dank, sad place so late at night in the cold, and he usually told them not to bother with it, in the nicest fashion he could. They were just being curious after all. Not their fault. He would pay them, thank them, his manners taking effect automatically and it was almost annoying to be so polite when one felt so bitter towards the world. He would stand, sit, remain silent, talk. To himself, to Sherlock. To no one. Five nights so far he had done this.

The fifth night, the last visit, had been the first time he brought Sherlock's Stradivarius along with him. It would not be the last. Now, a month later, six months after St. Bart's, he stood bundled up in his jacket with the case in his chilled bare fingers once more, exhaling a shaky white breath and moving to sit once more in front of the headstone. The grass was cold and beginning to frost just the slightest bit, but it didn't matter to him. The case was settled in front of the marble stone, and he opened it with a quiet click. His fingers trembled, mainly from the chill, possibly from nerves. Hesitant, John's mouth pressed into a firm, thin line, and he inhaled again.

The agonized sound that raked forth from the strings the second time was just as offensive as the first, but even as he cringed and jumped at the grating sound he continued to follow through with the arching sweep of his hand and the bow against the strings, and the harsh sound faded gently into a smoother, lower note as he randomly chose a string to fret. It was much more pleasing to the ears after the scraping had faded, and he sighed with heavy relief as he slowly lowered the instrument into his lap again.

It wasn't much...but it was a start.

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Seven months brought him to Christmas. By then he was surprised he'd even survived that long, let alone with a decent quality of life. Not much had changed, perhaps he was a bit calmer and less out rightly angry about things. Attempting to play the violin remained purely a cemetery activity. To celebrate, or at least stand around and chatter over snacks for a while, they gathered at the cafe downstairs for a few hours, himself and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade, and an understandably reluctant Molly, and Sarah and even Harry and her new girlfriend, though John had his deep suspicions that it wasn't something entirely serious or steady. She was off the booze again, so he'd been told.

_Wrong._

_Take a day off, Sherlock._

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In the months that followed, John continued to visit Sherlock's grave once a month, taking his usual cab around ten or eleven with violin case in hand and eventually a few sheets of music as well, going and sitting and...well, he couldn't call it playing. Trying to play. He was learning.

Time was no longer centered around waking up, working, eating, sleeping; no, now it was focused more on 'how many days until I go back', and before he knew it, he had visited Sherlock six times since the Christmas after the fact and now it was June again. His social skills were consistently at a low, but at least they were consistent. Conversation was only successful when pursued and involving alcohol, which was mainly why the best portion of his outings that involved talking and not the dead were with Greg at the pub. Many of them ended with him losing substantial chunks of memory and ending up, one way or another, back at Baker Street. He suspected Mycroft. He got the sense that he and Lestrade were in it together, looking after him; but he wouldn't say it aloud and neither of them would, either. He'd yet to see Mycroft in person since Sherlock's funeral. It was probably still for the best.

Perhaps it was masochistic to go and visit him on the year anniversary of his death, but John had discovered that as of recent, he was far more willing to subject himself to painfully familiar things that would have sent him running months prior. The violin had started that. Then the chair. He wouldn't sit in it, but he'd yet to get rid of the thing. The skull was there, as well, always bothering Mrs. Hudson, and though he knew it was cruel he just couldn't help smirk a little when she mumbled and told him how badly she wished he'd throw _'the nasty thing_' away. Little things like that, things that were persistent reminders of Sherlock Holmes. But he kept them anyways, and he went to the cemetery on a particular day in the middle of June. Not too cold, but achingly silent. Even the streets were quiet this time of year, for whatever reason, or maybe it was just today. Maybe the heavy blanket of emotion and mourning that today carried for him simply muffled the rest of the world. Maybe it was just him.

But it didn't matter. He had a headstone to sit in front of, and a violin to attempt to play less-than-horribly.

Taking up his usual position, he skimmed over some of the pages of music he'd printed from a beginner's site, finally growing annoyed with them and himself considering he didn't actually remember much about reading music and folding them back up to stuff into his pocket before he lifted the violin. There was a pause, and a pursing of the lips; and then he began.

These visits had turned into practice sessions of sorts. In the beginning he would stay maybe twenty minutes, and he would remain mostly silent during those twenty; now he was often here sitting in the damp grass for beyond an hour, scraping away until nothing but the smooth polished notes resulted from his repetition. They were like lessons. The closer he remained to Sherlock...maybe, just maybe, the better he'd get, the more he would improve.

Why he was doing all of this, he didn't know. But he couldn't stop now. John played that evening until his fingers were numb.

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Thankfully, the violin took no damage from his once-a-month practice sessions, but eventually it began to falter in tone and he was forced to do something about the waning, formerly-perfect quality of the instrument's sound. John sat at his laptop at the kitchen table for perhaps two hours before he decided that he was properly acquainted with tuning and how in the world it was supposed to sound, and felt that he had made his minute adjustments accurately enough to suffice. It couldn't be proven without testing it, though, and uneasily he lifted the bow. He'd never played in the flat before, fingers unusually jerky even for him.

As usual, it began with a raking noise, but suddenly the sound was smooth and flowing, and his furrowed brow relaxed as he played a few lines of something he'd listened to, something Mozart, he thought, gradually becoming more at ease before he finally removed the freshly-tuned violin and set it down gingerly on the table. Sighing, John leaned back in the wooden chair and stared at the computer screen, still playing the last video he'd sought out for help with the tuning. The flat was empty and quiet, painfully so, but the little burst of notes helped a little bit, at least - the acoustics of the apartment were surprisingly rhythmic. Turning his head away from the laptop, he scanned the kitchen with its tidy appearance, and then the living room, also comfortingly neat. Clean, for once, of his doing, not Mrs. Hudson's; void of stacks of innumerable papers, and riding crops and harpoons and body parts laying strewn about haphazardly. No bubbling, haze-inducing experiments strewn across every available flat surface, staining the counters and leaving water rings on the table. No fingers in the fridge. No dummies hanging from the ceiling. No top sheet laying strewn about wherever its owner had dropped it. No pink suitcases. No grating insults. No compositions formed at three in the morning. No Sherlock.

_No Sherlock._

John Watson was not a man who was brought to violence or tears easily. He had been to war and back. Only on the worst nights of his flashbacks had he ever actually cried real streaming tears, and on occasion, he had shouted, or broken something, but for the most part he was relatively calm in his anger and frustration. But as he stared around the flat, silent and clean and perfect and so, so wrong, something within him stirred, and he stood shakily, nails digging grooves into his palms. Something furious and pathetic and mortified and hollow began to grow, ripping into his chest like a wild animal.

He, more or less, tore the flat apart. The chair he'd been sitting in went first, thrown backwards, and then he wrought havoc upon the rest of the place. His coffee mug from earlier, still half-full, was thrown to the ground and it shattered, and he walked through it to shove aside the side table and send it flying to the ground. Books were thrown. More glass was shattered, nothing important but it made a fine mess that crunched stingingly beneath his bare feet as he walked. The desk was swept clean and papers flew across the floor, and he shoved a lamp over as he left the room, intending on heading for the stairwell that lead up to his own room. Instead he found himself veering towards the other room in the house.

There was very little emotion associated with Sherlock's bedroom - he didn't feel he was violating anything private, seeing how the man barely ever used the room and it was nearly barren on its own, not John's or Mrs. Hudson's doing. The only thing it had ever been used for - and it was rare even then - was sleeping, when Sherlock didn't mindlessly doze in the cab or fall asleep in his chair or sprawled over the couch. At any rate, the room wasn't personalized hardly at all, and he didn't know what he was doing in there, except perhaps his subconscious mind had decided to take him somewhere void of things to break. There was a mirror hanging on the wall, and he flung his hand into it, and then he dropped to the floor with chest heaving and both hands red and cut, and stared at the wall. His firm stance on the frontlines of remaining mentally stable was beginning to falter.

He was a soldier in the center of the battlefield again, losing his ground, and he was outnumbered.

Mrs. Hudson knocked on the door only once, and when he grit his teeth and swallowed the thick lump in his throat and told her that he was fine and for her to leave it, she left him alone to sob quietly in the sanctity of Sherlock's old bedroom in relative peace. It was not something he wanted her or anyone else to see; it was shameful, private, exclusive to him and the bedroom alone. John was well aware of the blood he'd wiped across his cheeks while rubbing away tears, and of the puffy appearance of his skin, and none of it mattered as he finally dragged himself from the bedroom an hour or so later to observe the damage he had done. A mess, but manageable. He would live. So would the flat. His pension would cover anything that needed replacing. It had been worth it, mostly.

It was three hours before the mess was cleaned up, and he spent it in utter silence, sweeping up glass and ceramic fragments, vacuuming, turning the side table and the desk and chair back up again. The books were replaced on the shelf, and anything else that hadn't broken when he had shoved, thrown, or kicked it to the floor; for the most part, things were fine, maybe a chip or a small scratch at the most. Coffee was scrubbed up, pillows replaced in their rightful spots. His hands were bandaged up neatly with the usual precision of a skilled army doctor, and his face washed and he changed his clothes. By the time he was finished, it was as if his little...outbreak of emotion had never happened.

But it had. John Watson the army doctor had thrown a fit. He felt like a child. It didn't matter whether or not his reasoning was good.

Later on in the evening, Mrs. Hudson knocked again and he invited her in, apologizing briefly for his tone earlier as she scanned the now-clean flat, waving a hand at him dismissively and mentioning how witchy she could get about her hip sometimes and how _'it's nothing to worry about, dear, why don't you come downstairs for a cuppa, and perhaps you could take a look at something for me, I can't quite reach the top shelf in the cafe and I'm afraid I might have something spoiled up there, would you mind?_' He said he didn't, that was fine, and followed her down in relative silence, grateful for a respite from the lack of noise in the flat and its sickening tidiness and everything else that didn't remind him of Sherlock.

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His social outings experienced a small increase after his breakdown. The desire to leave the flat was unbearable, and he joined Lestrade nearly every Friday for a drink or two or five, and he went to the surgery regardless of how insanely boring it was to him now. Some days he spent less than an hour there outside of when he returned to sleep. It was more bearable that way.

And perhaps, just maybe, he let the flat go a tiny bit, let a few more papers lay about, let a coffee mug or a dish lay out the whole day, or something. Sometimes Mrs. Hudson came in and allowed her need to be tidy take over, and he didn't protest when he came home to a slightly cleaner flat, but it...felt familiar. In a good way. Knowing there was a mess in the flat made him think for just a moment that there was something else besides it. There wasn't and never would be. But he could imagine for a moment, just a moment, that there was. It was something.

Two years, now, since this had started. Well, since everything else had ended. He had reached a sort of flatline on his own Richter scale, nothing really rising or falling in his life aside from minor little bounces that one night a month and on the occasion that an evening out went particularly well and he forgot that he was, in essence, a platonic widower for a little while. They weren't common, but sometimes they happened, and he laughed and cracked jokes and it was alright. Survivable, at any rate. It was an occasional but refreshing moment of…contentment.

But he didn't stop visiting the cemetery, and he didn't stop bringing the violin, either. His playing was improving, slowly, but improving. Every month something got better, something sounded more elegant and smooth, something didn't screech or howl. Some nights it made him feel no less miserable if he managed a full chorus of 'Here Comes the Bride', which he had found much simpler to play and far less relatable with his limited knowledge than some other pieces. Others, though, it warmed him through the late evening chill, and he could even manage a small smile as he sat in the grass there, and it was okay for just a moment. He was improving, and though he only played at the flat when the instrument desperately required tuning, it showed through on those late evenings. He was getting better. Slowly, and nothing close to Sherlock. But better.

Two years. It amazed him that he was still standing.

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It was autumn again. The weather was nearing hellish, snowing already and windy to boot, and his shoulder ached enough to force him to a steady regiment of painkillers, nothing prescription, but strong enough to keep him at home unless he was at the surgery. Nights out were off-limits, unless he wanted to sit there uselessly while Greg got wasted. Which could be entertaining on its own, but required wasting money on a cab trip, and he was frugal even without having to pay the rent. Alcohol and medication were a bad mix anyhow. He was just as mildly content home, alone, watching soap reruns and muttering about the inaccurate depictions of uniforms on some kind of 'military housewife'-based program. It was nearly eleven before his drugged stupor thinned enough for him to realize that tonight was the night he'd planned on going to visit Sherlock.

It was surprising how fast a semi-crippled war veteran under the influence of painkillers could move when pushed to the occasion. John gathered up the violin and his coat without even bothering to turn off the television, thundering down the stairs and out the front door with only half a mind to lock it behind him. Somehow, it was nigh impossible to hail a cab at eleven at night, but eventually someone stopped and off he went. It was freezing even when he reached the cemetery, and he paid the driver with a bit of a tip considering he actually took John's muttered urges to drive more quickly into account. Shoes crunching fallen leaves, he strode quickly through the yard between headstones and nameplates and ornamented grave markers, towards the familiar black marbled rectangle, and sighed heavily with relief. As if, somehow, he'd had someone there waiting for him.

" Sorry I'm late, " he murmured quietly under the safe cover of night and chill, sitting and opening the case as usual.

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Two years and six months. Christmas Eve.

It was all too sentimental, much worse than how he'd felt first bringing the violin along, doing this…now. On Christmas, of all days, one of Sherlock's least favorite holidays, in the snow that had measured nearly a foot deep and had nearly forced John to walk here on his own. His shoulder and leg already ached, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to make it if he hadn't snagged a cab on its last run. He probably could have managed, but he preferred not to think about it. Traipsing through ankle-deep or worse snow for who knew how long at night? He was grateful for the cab.

It was just as empty and silent as always, if not more so, the eerie feeling of complete loneliness sinking in with the city's sounds muffled by snow and the fact that most were inside with their families and friends rather than out on the cold streets of London. Even less so was the possibility of someone else being here in the graveyard, which was relieving, and so he made his way along the path with relative confidence that he was in fact on his own. As far as he could tell, he was correct in that assumption.

Clearing away the snow from the top of the headstone with a gloved hand, John kicked snow away from the foot of it and the patch where he normally sat, dropping into a slow, ache-wary crouch in order to place the small poinsettia bouquet and the little candle that Mrs. Hudson had passed along to him when he mentioned where he was going. He was thankful that she hadn't asked to come along. Once he had set them in the cleared patch at the foot of the grave, he slipped a packet of matches out of his pocket and set the case down to light the candle, thankful also for the lack of wind at the moment. It took a few tries to get it to remain burning, but once he finally had it, he leaned back and swept away snow from the grass, sitting cross-legged in the little hollow he'd made and pulling the case into his lap. Suppressing a shiver, he flipped open the clasps and studied the instrument for a moment before tugging off his gloves to push them into his pocket, and lifting it and the bow out of the case. Still sleek and gleaming, still in pristine condition aside from the tiniest smudge here or there from his fingerprints; he'd taken great care with it over the past two and a half years, with good reason.

Inhaling deep and sighing a stream of white air, he gently settled the violin into place against his neck, lifting the bow and letting it lightly slide over the strings as he fretted a note. The sound was much smoother, much kinder to the ear than his first attempt had been, and he hummed a little, trying to work himself into some kind of rhythm. He'd actually learned a full song, or most of a song, and he wanted to play it…well, perfection was out of the question, but he wanted to get close, at least.

It began slowly, awkwardly, as always, but eventually, he managed to pick up an almost-normal speed, unease disguised as rhythmic and carefully-paced. Even with his gloves, his fingers had damn near frozen in the brisk walk from the road to the grave site, and it made it uncomfortable to play more so than usual, but he cared little. The slow, lurching rendition of '_O Come, O Come, Emmanuel'_eventually took to a pattern, and John played. All the focus in him went straight to his fingers and ears, into playing just this one piece properly, just this single song for him and or Sherlock and he didn't care how foolish of him it was to play Christmas music to a tombstone. No one else was around to watch him do it, and even if there were, he felt he wouldn't have cared.

Deaf to the world but for the music, he played, occasionally hesitant but for the most part continuing on with relative ease. He'd practiced this several times, never all the way through but close enough to be confident in his skills. In fact, he felt almost confident enough to say he was nearing Sherlock's skill, if Sherlock were very tired and had consumed a large amount of alcohol before beginning to play. It sounded depressing, but he was proud of himself. He sounded only a little bit horrendous now. Daresay decent, even.

As he approached the second verse, his grip on the bow fumbled lightly and he adjusted it with an off-key thrum, swallowing and continuing. Alone in the drifts of white, fresh flakes steadily beginning to fall around him, he heard only the violin, and that was all there was to hear anyhow; anything else was muffled by the dampening blanket of snow, and his desire to be alone in this moment. He wanted this to himself and to the grave in front of him, and to have any other pair of ears play audience would soil it in a way, unless they were the ears of Sherlock Holmes. Eyes sliding shut in the silence but for the song and the faint vibrations of hair against strings, he breathed and played, and the world ceased to exist.

_We're not a couple._

Yes you are.

The smoothness of the notes warmed him slowly, erasing the steady numbness of his fingers or at least allowing him not to feel the sting of cold any longer. In a morbid sense, it felt like he was dying, but peacefully, as if he were sliding away in his sleep to nap, but more permanently. He knew he was still breathing but it was not acknowledged. Unimportant.

Just…transport.

"_ O come, o come, Emmanuel…_" he murmured, voice barely a whisper, swallowed up by the silence and the music until he faded into humming once more. It felt as though familiar hands were guiding his own inexperienced ones along the bow, and the strings, leading him to the right notes and warming his fingers with their own, and he no longer felt alone. He felt as though Sherlock was there with him, beside him, around him, both comforting and horrendously hollow as he could be, but either way he felt something other than loneliness. This was as close to perfection as he was ever going to reach. Alone, and cold, and feeling quite miserable as a whole but for this moment…but it was perfect.

Until a crunch sounded from behind him, and he jerked to a stop, senses ever-keen as he snapped his head to the side, lowering the instrument. Another visitor, maybe, someone who had heard his playing and wandered over to see what the noise was? A late-night respecter of the dead, like himself, hoping for a little e privacy and being just as sorely disappointed and maybe even embarrassed as he was? Or something less wholesome, someone with less emotionally uplifting intentions. He swallowed thickly, scanning the path behind him and finding…

…Nothing.

Surely it had been something unintended. Snow sliding off a branch, or one of the headstones, or something. His nerves properly rattled, he wasn't sure how much he believed that himself, but he had to look on the positive side of something for once and this…wasn't the proper time but oh, well. Slowly lifting the violin back into place, he kept his head turned back as he set it against his neck, bow-wielding hand surprisingly shaky. It'd been a startling sound. He almost thought for a moment that he wasn't alone.

The second he turned ahead again and settled the bow back onto the strings, there was another sound, lighter, almost unnoticeable save by the trained, Afghanistan-seasoned army doctor, not a crunch, but a wisp of noise, and his eyes flickered upwards on instinct…and the trained, Afghanistan-seasoned army doctor let out a loud shuddering gasp of shock, dropping the violin with a sharp jolt and flying back, hands holding him up, plunged into the snow. Chest heaving with startled gasps, he stared upwards, on the other side of the headstone, eyes wide.

The identity of the figure was shrouded by the shade of the tree by which Sherlock had been buried, but considering the swathe of darkness and the tall shape and just the barest hint of the whites of a pair of eyes, he had an idea, and once he'd found his voice, his brow furrowed with sharp rage. " Mycroft, if you think two and a half years is long enough, then you are sorely mis—"

" John. "

He froze, stricken silent. That voice was not the older, calmer, calculated tone of Mycroft Holmes. That voice was tired, weak, quiet, he barely would have heard it if he hadn't been listening and if not for the deadening of the snow around them. It was sad. Almost…fearful. Not questioning, quite sure, but fearful nonetheless. His mind churned with impossibility, trying desperately to identify the voice with every trail leading him to the same place, and then he would slap away the idea only to be plagued by it again, all the while sitting there freezing in the snow and staring up at the figure in the shadows, denying its very existence. It wasn't. _Couldn't_be. Impossible.

_Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth._

" No, " he blurted flatly. A footstep crunched forward.

" John – "

" NO! " he snarled, jaw tense as he scrambled to his feet, sweeping snow from his trousers and sleeves, knees beginning to feel as though they might collapse. If he suspended the idea long enough, perhaps it would lose reality, lose its ground and dissipate. He could be hallucinating; the drugs he'd been taking weren't listed as having any hallucinogenic side effects but anything was a more logical explanation at this point than the one currently presenting itself. " No. No, no, no, no, no - "

The explanation that said the voice belonged to Sherlock Holmes, and that same Sherlock Holmes whose grave he stood on was standing before him. Alive.

"_ – no no no no –_"

" John – "

" – no no no no _NO NO NO,_" he repeated, snatching the violin and bow and the case from the snow and backing away, face twisted up in a combination of horror, confusion and misery. He was not going to let himself go mad like this, he would not be labeled a crackpot theorist ranting and raving about dead men rising from the grave to the tune of badly played Christmas music. He wouldn't have it. He was already mad for coming here in the first place, madder for the entire situation with the violin, and -

" John! "

Oh, _God._

The violin was dropped, along with the bow and case, and as if slapped, John staggered backwards in the unmarred snow, frame stiff with shock and fear and internal conflict, senses raging in a civil war in his mind. Slowly, the figure stepped forward, and then around the headstone into the limited light of the cloud-hazed moon, feet crunching softly as the heartbreakingly familiar form revealed itself more clearly. Hair bedraggled and damp, skin pale, not the color it usually had been, but whiter, like death, like the last time he had seen it, on the sidewalk in front of St. Bart's. Something in him lurched and he resisted the urge to vomit as he stared at that face, eyes shadowed heavily from what his doctor's mind assumed to be lack of sleep or possibly illness, brow furrowed up tightly, conflicted like his own emotions were. The familiarly sharp cheekbones were like razors, sunken and drawn like his neck, insufficiently shielded from the cold by a lack of high collar or scarf. All in all he shouldn't have seemed anything like the real thing – a jumper, hell, something he himself would have worn, under a windbreaker about ten sizes too large for his bony, lanky frame, jeans, jeans of all things and shoes that were buried in the snow anyways. No gloves, no scarf. No greatcoat. But it was him.

Sherlock.

He looked miserable, both in state and emotion, as though he'd been sick for several days and it was wearing on his mind, as well, which he could believe. When the transport interfered with the commanding power of the body, he became frustrated, and John had at several times had to tell him specifically what to do about his physical suffering simply to get him to calm down and heal. But it seemed more than that, not simply physical, he looked -miserable- with a sense of sadness and fear and dare he say -shame- in his eyes, standing there a foot from the grave he was supposed to be laying in, pleading silently with John. For him to believe.

" John, " he repeated, sounding uncharacteristically desperate, and he entertained the fleeting thought that this was simply a very successful imposter. " Please. Just… "

" You…" he began, voice quiet, trembling. "… are _supposed_to be dead. "

He paused, mouth pressed into a thin line. " I can explain – "

" _Don't,_" he snapped, covering his mouth with the back of one hand and staggering another step backwards, then pointing at him in a futile attempt to feel more in control of the situation and his own body. He felt ill. " You…I watched you die. I watched you die and you went in the ground and you are –dead-. You can't…you can't be alive. You just can't. This isn't happening. " John swayed on his feet, and felt nauseous, and with a lurch he felt his knees crumble; dropping into the snow, Sherlock made a dive for him, hands moving to grasp the fabric of John's side and sleeve and falling with him to his knees. His head was spinning - he felt like someone had just sucked the oxygen out of his lungs and forced it into his skull with a fire hose.

" I…I can explain, I promise, John, " Sherlock sighed, pulling his hands away from the doctor uneasily, eyes flickering over him and then up to John's face and then sideways at the violin, still lying in the snow where it had been dropped, though he made no move to pick it up, which was flooring on its own. His fingers moved to his temples, eyes closing for a moment. " I promise, I'll explain everything, I just – "

" Jesus, " John breathed, interrupting him, swallowing thickly and staring as the other man looked up, seeming confused as he was gazed at hazily. His shoulders went slack, looking hopeless for a moment, and then John reached up with shaking fingers just to make sure, just to touch him the lightest bit, let the edges of his fingertips push against his chest and feel something solid, solid cloth and flesh underneath it, to prove all of this to him…

He did, and choked out something like a gasp and a sob, and he was done. He didn't understand how it was possible. He didn't want to hear Sherlock's explanation. He would in fact very much have liked to lock himself in his room at Baker Street, and scream and throw something and be miserably confused in private, but no; he was sitting in the snow in the middle of a graveyard on Christmas Eve face to face with a dead man, and he was sobbing, and Sherlock was very much alive in front of him. Hand recoiling, he pinched at the bridge of his nose, brow furrowing and eyes screwing shut as he sustained fierce, wracking sobs, making his best attempt to remain composed as the same hand returned, balling up in Sherlock's thin jacket as if to tether him to this world, to his side. The cemetery remained silent except for his awkward, rasping breathing and whines as he suppressed his crying as best he could.

Slowly, awkwardly, gangly arms and bony, bare fingers slipped around him, tugging him closer, and Sherlock was actually hugging him, John's forehead against his collarbone; he lost it finally, melting into a sobbing, aching mess, cursing the detective and redacting his insults in the same breath and then eventually losing the ability to speak at all, and he got the vaguest sense that Sherlock was crying in his own way as well. How long they sat there for, he wasn't sure; he'd gone numb a long time ago. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. The violin didn't matter and the music didn't matter and his frozen, damp trousers didn't matter and it didn't matter that it was Christmas. Sherlock was alive. _That _mattered.

His head found the crook of the man's icy neck and he buried himself in it, fingers digging into his back as Sherlock hunched over him on his knees, gently rubbing his bony, chilled fingers through John's hair, the coolness soothing even with the temperature. It didn't matter how long they sat there, but eventually one of them pulled away, and Sherlock stood and offered his hand, and John took it, throat still tight, voice still hoarse and his face splotchy and swollen unattractively. Wavering on his feet, he gripped at Sherlock's arms as much as Sherlock gripped at his, and they stood there for a moment regaining some semblance of composure, and then John reached down to pick the violin and bow and case out of the snow. Brushing them off and drying them with the underside of his shirt – thankfully, both were lacquered well enough to withstand a little dampness –he settled them back into the case, and then shoved it into Sherlock's chest, making him jump and look down, then up uncertainly.

" I carried it here, " John said, voice still shaking, eyes flickering up to meet Sherlock's. There was uncertainty there, pain almost, as though there was the heavy expectation that he would be sent away, pushed back into the shadows and left alone in the cemetery while John took his emotions home and hated him for all of eternity. He swallowed, looking genuinely…afraid. John's jaw twitched, and he swallowed, lips pressed into a firm line as he rubbed at his eyes with the edge of his sleeve, then looked up again, exhaling shakily.

" You're carrying it home. "


End file.
